Category Archives: Acquisitions

new acquisitions

American Musicians

Back in 2011, Pasadena visual and sound artist Steve Roden published a collection of vernacular photographs together with several compilation CDs entitled I Listen to the Wind that Obliterates My Traces …, which presented music and musicians we might not otherwise know or appreciate. Derived mainly from flea market cabinet cards and photographic postcards 1860-1930, the images capture musicians old and young; country and city; classically trained and self-taught; costumed and barefooted.

Popular showmen such as Professor McCrae, a Canadian one man band, are presented but the majority of the collection are unidentified next-door neighbors you may have seen at the local town square gazebo or fairgrounds. Some portraits were taken at commercial studios, possibly the one formal photograph someone may have had made. Still others reveal a bed sheet quickly tacked up on the porch to serve as a homemade backdrop. Either way, someone cared enough to print each of these photographs onto a penny postcard or paper mount, to be mailed or shared with others.

Roden organized the images “to create what he calls ‘his specifically timed experience. There are these pauses where there are photos with no people, and a quote from a literary text. The whole thing is about slowing down.’ And, in an odd way, the visual aspect of the book is also an ode to silence. ‘There something very absurd about collecting images of something that’s not present in the photograph — which is the sound,’ says Roden. ‘There’s something perverse about that.’”–Randall Roberts, LA Times

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired approximately 330 photographs, 1880s to 1930s, originally owned by Steve Roden, some published in his 2011 book I listen to the wind… and others never before seen by the general public. The contents have been variously listed as blind musicians, family bands, poised soloists, women’s social clubs, sibling groups, drinking buddies, and all kinds of instruments (one-man bands, glass harps, bassoons, banjos, violas, drum kits, trumpets, and clarinets, et al.). This group is specifically American portraits.

Highlights include close to a hundred images of women musicians, from soloists to women’s bands and cabaret acts; images of musical ‘special personalities’, e.g. a one-armed musician, albino musicians, and an African-American dwarf troubadour, Lynn Lewis White; child musicians, including vaudeville performer L. Wade Ray, “The Boy Wonder Youngest Violin Player in U.S.A.;” a number of examples depicting one-man bands; and unidentified African-American musicians.


 

 

 

This is the first of three posts offering a taste of our wonderful new collection. The next post will feature one-person-bands and the third, musical families.

 

 

Major Lynn Lewis White, 21 years old

 


 

 

 

 

Steve Roden, I Listen to the Wind that Obliterates My Traces: Music in Vernacular Photographs, 1880-1955 (Atlanta, Ga.: Dust to Digital, 2011). Mendel ML87 .R654 2011

Miss traveling? Unusual histories and wonderful experiences commenced in the year 1660

Eduward Meltons, Engelsch Edelmans, Zeldzaame en gedenkwaardige zee- en land-reizen: door Egypten, West-Indien, Perzien, Turkyen, Oost-Indien, en d’aangrenzende gewesten; behelzende een zeer naauwkeurige beschrijving der genoemde landen, benevens der zelber jnwoonderen gods-dienst, regeering, zeden en gewoonten, mitsgaders veele zeer vreemde voorvallen, ongemeene geschiedenissen, en wonderlijke wedervaringen. Aangevangen in den jaare 1660. en geeindigd in den jaare 1677. Vertaald uit d’eigene aanteekeningen en brieven van den gedagten heer Melton, en met verscheidene schoone kopere figuuren versierd...(Amsterdam. 1702). Second edition. Nine of the plates, including the added engraved title page, were engraved by Jan Luiken (1649-1712); others engraved by Jacob Harrewijn (1660-1727). Graphic Arts GAX 2020- in process

= Eduward Meltons, English noblemen, Rare and memorable sea and land journeys: through Egypt, West-Als, Persians, Turkyen, East-Als, and neighboring regions; comprising a very accurate description of the countries mentioned, in addition to the self-inhabiting religion, government, morals and customs, as well as many very strange occurrences, unusual histories, and wonderful experiences. Commenced in the year 1660 and ended in the year 1677. Translated from the notes and letters of Mr. Melton’s own notes and letters, and adorned with several beautiful copper figures

With an added engraved title page with title Eduward Meltons Zee en land reizen door verscheide gewesten des werelds = Eduward Melton’s Sea and Land travel through various parts of the world.

The Graphic Arts Collection acquired this compilation of travel accounts from various sources by the fictitious Eduward Melton, attributed to Godofridus van Broekhuizen.

The part relating to Egypt has been identified as a translation of Johann Michael Wansleben’s Nouvelle relation en forme de iournal, d’un voyage fait en Egypte (Paris, 1677; London, 1678). Rare Books 2272.68958.332.6. No plates

The part relating to New Netherland is thought to be an abridgement of Adriaen van der Donck’s Beschrijvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant (Amsterdam, 1655). Rare Books EXKA Americana 1655 Donck; With the introduction to that part being taken from Arnoldos Montanus’s De nieuwe en onbekende weereld (Amsterdam, 1671). Rare Books Oversize 1075.651q


The part relating to the West Indies is in part taken from Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin’s De Americaensche zee-rooveres (Amsterdam, 1678). Rare Books EXKA Americana 1678 Exquemelin. See more at the John Carter Brown Library: https://jcblibrary.org/collection/engelsch-edelmans-zeldzaame-en-gedenkwaardige-zee-en-land-reizen

Jan Luyken or Luiken or Luijken (Dutch, 1649-1712) studied under the painter Martinus Saeghmolen. He married Marie de Oude on 5 March 1672 and had five children, all of whom died young, except for Caspar, the eldest. Shortly after 1673, having been enthralled by the religious teachings of Jacob Böhme, he became a fanatical Pietist. Jan Luyken was a member of the Haarlem guild in 1699 and returned to Amsterdam in 1705. His large output of engravings totalled some 3,275, and he was also an author.–Benezit Dictionary of Artists

Detail of Slave Market

A New Asiatic Melo Drame, Called The Africans or, The Desolate Island

Perhaps the earliest and most charming image of Richardson’s Theatre at the Bartholomew Fair appeared in Rudolph Ackermann’s Microcosm of London (1808-10), etched and aquatinted by Thomas Rowlandson and Augustus Pugin. (Graphic Arts Collection Oversize Rowlandson 1808.02f).

Led by John Richardson (1767-1827), the outdoor productions at Bartholomew and Greenwich Fairs were said to rivaled those of the London theaters. “Richardson first opened his theatrical production at Bartholomew Fair in 1798 using scenery from Drury Lane. The performances took place in a narrow booth (100 feet by 30 feet), colourful and brightly lit. The show toured, in the London area, to such fairs as Southwark, Brook Green and Greenwich. Over time, Richardson’s booth expanded, and he ran several performances simultaneously, and he could stage over a dozen burlesques and melodramas each day. By 1828, the price of admission was sixpence, and refreshments were another profit source for the troupe. The young Edmund Kean learned his craft here, before moving on to a more respectable theatrical environment. After Richardson’s death, the show was continued until 1853 by Nelson Lee.—Victoria & Albert collection database

According to the British Library, “Bartholomew Fair was under almost constant attack from City authorities during the 18th and 19th centuries for the immorality and drunkenness that was often witnessed there. The salacious theatre productions on show were of particular concern to moral reformers, as was the ability of the fair to keep the working population from their daily employment. Theatrical shows were eventually banned from the site in the 1840s following several public disturbances, and the fair itself was prohibited entirely by the City of London authorities in 1855.”

Thomas Rowlandson, Greenwich Fair with Richardson’s booth [detail]. Pen and brown and grey ink, with grey wash and watercolour. 1811-1816. British Museum. ‘Richardson’s Show’ (part of this composition) was etched by the artist and published in ‘Rowlandson’s World in Miniature’, 1816, pl. 14. Graphic Arts Collection Rowlandson 1816.5

“Richardson’s platform was lined with green baize, festooned with crimson curtains, and lighted with fifteen hundred variegated lamps. His money takers sat in Gothic seats. He had a band of ten beefeaters, and a parade of his dramatic force.”

 

Thomas Rowlandson, People watching Richardson’s Travelling Theatre on stage. Etching, 1816. Welcome Institute.

 

”In 1825 William Hone described [Richardson’s] theatre at Bartholomew Fair. Its frontage was a hundred feet wide and thirty feet tall, with a spacious elevated platform, or ‘walk-up’, in front. This was decorated in green baize with fringed crimson curtains and contained two Gothic arches into the theatre behind, where the money takers sat. Fifteen hundred lamps in chandeliers, clusters and festoons illumined the walk-up, where a band of ten played and actors in costume paraded or danced in sets. Charles Dickens described “the company now promenading outside in all the dignity of wigs, spangles, red-ochre, and whitening. See with what a ferocious air the gentlemen who personates the Mexican chief paces up and down and with what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian gazes on the crowd below, or converses confidentially with the harlequin!” — Robert Leach, An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance (2018).

 


The Africans or, The Desolate Island [broadside] (London: Hughes, 1800). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

The broadside states: “J. Richardson feels happy that the revolving time gives him an opportunity of once more expressing his heartfelt gratitude to his generous patrons for their former kindness, and assure them, from the close of last season to the present period, his every exertion has been used to render this year’s entertainments worthy that support they have on all occasions honored him with, and which his attention to their convenience and amusements will, he hopes, convince them of, an addition of Twenty New Scenes, by the first artists in London, and a daily change of performances, entirely novel, will still continue him that success is shall at all times be his pride and study to deserve, when will be performed a new Asiatic melo Drame, called The Africans or, The Desolate Island.”

 

Look inside this cabinet of wonders, a beautiful rarity


Open the cabinet door, inscribed “Schöne rarität, schöne spielewerk” (Beautiful rarity, beautiful game work), and you will see what others are viewing through the peep holes at the sides. This volume has two engraved plates with movable flaps, along with eight others engraved by Christian Friedrich Boetius, Johann Benjamin Brühl, and Georg Paul Busch after designs by David Richter.

 

Later in the volume, two wide  tables open to let the viewer see inside the two tents, guarded by several antelope.


The stories are credited to Jean Chretien Toucement, the pseudonym for Johann Christian Trömer (1697-1756), a Franco-German dialect poet at the court of Augustus the Strong. The Oxford companion to German literature by Henry and Mary Garland describe the author:

 

Jean Chretien Toucement des Deutsch Franc̦os schrifften, mit viel schön kuffer stick, kanss complett, mehr besser und kanss viel vermehrt. Leipssigck, Bey die auteur und ock bey Johann Christian Troemer [1736]. Graphic Arts 2020- in process.  Note the date written in a rebus at the bottom of the title page.

Princeton also holds the later 1745 edition, with many plates reprinted.

 

 

 

Poetamenos (Minuspoet)

Augusto de Campos, Poetamenos (São Paulo: Edições Invenção, 1973). Graphic Arts in process

As leading voices in Brazilian concretism or concrete poetry, Augusto de Campos (born 1931), his brother Haroldo de Campos, and Décio Pignatari founded the Noigandres group and its literary magazine, Noigandres; antologia do verso à poesia concreta in the 1950s. Like Europeans such as Stéphane Mallermé, the Noigandres were interested in exploring the visual elements of written or printed words, along with sung or spoken performances of these texts, which they called verbivocovisual.

Here is a small portion of the biography on his website that mentions Poetamenos (Minuspoet):

Born in São Paulo (Brazil) in 1931, poet, translator, literary and music critic. In 1951 he published his first book of poems, O REI MENOS O REINO (The King Minus the Kingdom). In 1952, with his brother Haroldo de Campos and Decio Pignatari, he launched the literary magazine “Noigandres”, the origin of the Noigandres Group which initiated the international movement of concrete poetry in Brazil. The second issue of that magazine (1955) contained his series of color¬poems POETAMENOS (Minuspoet), written in 1953, and considered the first consistent examples of concrete poetry in Brazil. Verse and conventional syntax are abandoned and the words are rearranged in graphic patterns. sometimes printed in six different colors, under inspiration of Webern’s Klangfarbenmelodie.

In 1956 he participated in the organization of the First National Exhibition of Concrete Art (Painting and Poetry) in the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo. His work has since been included in many international exhibitions, as well in world¬known anthologies like “Concrete Poetry: an International Anthology”, edited by Stephen Bann (London, 1967), “Concrete Poetry: a World View”, edited by Mary Ellen Solt (University of Bloomington, Indiana, 1968),” Anthology of Concrete Poetry”, edited by Emmet Williams (NY, 1968). Most of his poems were assembled in VIVA VAIA,1979, DESPOESIA, 1994, and NÃO (with a CDR of his Clip-Poems), 2003. Other important works are POEMOBILES (1974), CAIXA PRETA(Black Box)1975, collections of object-poems in collaboration with the graphic artist and designer Julio Plaza. —http://www.augustodecampos.com.br/biografia.htm

 

See also:
Mary Ellen Solt, ed., Concrete Poetry: A World View (1968).

Emmet Williams, ed., An Anthology of Concrete Poetry (1967).

Douglas Thompson, “Pound and Brazilian Concretism,” Paideuma (Winter 1977): 279-294.

Claus Clüver, “Languages of the Concrete Poem,” in Transformations of Literary Language in Latin American Literature, edited by K. David Jackson (1987), pp. 32-43.

Augusto De Campos, Décio Pignatari, and Haroldo De Campos, Teoria da poesia concreta, 2d ed. (1975).

Yve Alain Bois, Geometric Abstraction: Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps De Cisneros Collection. Abstracción Geométrica Arte Latinoamericano En La Colección Patricia Phelps De Cisneros. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 2001.

Cintrão, Rejane, and Ana Paula Nascimento. Grupo Ruptura: Arte concreta paulista. São Paulo, SP: Cosac & Naify, 2002.

Bandeira, João. Arte concreta paulista: Documentos. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2002.

João Bandeira, Grupo Noigandres, textos João Bandeira, Lenora de Barros (São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2002). Marquand Oversize PQ9661.C64 B35 2002q

William Gray’s Social Contrasts [of women]


William Gray, Social Contrasts, Portrayed in a series of twenty two coloured lithographic plates from pen and ink sketches (London: William Oliver, 3 Amen Corner, Paternoster Row. And all Booksellers, no date [1865]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

In Victorian London, women were either good or bad, wealthy or poor, public or private, lucky or out of luck. There was no in-between. While this lovely volume offers charming lithographic plates, it also highlights the lack of options for women at that time. A successful performer is seen “Coming out in the lime light” but at the end of the night “Going Home in the Rain.”

Gray’s work was enthusiastically advertised in the March 31st issue of The Bookseller (1865), which promoted the “magnificently-coloured lithographic plates, copied from the original coloured pen and ink sketches” designed and executed by William Gray. In the same issue, the editor comments,

Mr William Oliver, who has recently commenced business in Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, publishes a volume, which in its way, is the most striking thing we have seen since the appearance of George Cruikshank’s “Bottle”. It is by a new artist, William Gray, and is entitled “Social Contrasts” … All are thoughtful studies, and preach more impressive sermons on a painful subject, than even Mr. Spurgeon [Charles Spurgeon the noted preacher] or the Bishop of Oxford could deliver. Shall we add that like many other erring objects, the pictures in this volume are so pretty, that we look on them with great enjoyment’ (p. 157).

“the most striking thing we have seen since the appearance of Greoge Cruikshank’s Bottle”

 

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), The Bottle: in eight plates designed and etched by George Cruikshank (London: published for the author by David Bogue; New York: Wiley and Putnam; Sydney, New South Wales: J. Sands, 1847). Graphic Arts Collection Oversize Cruik 1847.6eq

Samples of the Peter Adams Company’s American Art Papers

Peter Adams Company, Samples of the Peter Adams Company’s American Art Papers made at the company’s Waverly Mills at Buckland, Conn. New York, 1893. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

“The Waverly Mills were established by Peter Adams, at the village of Buckland, near the city of Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A., in the year 1861,” wrote Henry H. Bowman in this 1893 paper sample book for the Mill, although other sources indicate Adams purchased the mill in 1863. The book continues:

“…Mr. Adams was born in Scotland, and there learned thoroughly, in all its branches, the business of paper making. His father died when he was very young. His parents were in very moderate circumstances, and the spirit of self-reliance and the restless energy that throughout his career overcame all obstacles to success, were manifested by him then, when, at the tender age of eight years, he commenced the work of making himself an adept in the art of paper making.

To this work he applied himself steadily until he became an expert paper maker in all the branches of the art. At the age of twenty-one years he came to America. He and three other young Scotchmen set up and operated, at Saugerties, N.Y., the first fourdrinier paper machine that was operated in America. He soon became superintendent of a paper mill, and thereafter his services were in constant requisition in that capacity until he entered int the business of paper making on his own.”

 

By 1884, Peter Adams (1807-1889) was known as one of the oldest and most successful paper manufacturers in the United States. http://www.manchesterhistory.org/reprints/MHS3_AdamsMill.html

 

Note the specificity of this sample book: plate papers (8); chromolithographic plate papers (10) chart papers (2); map papers (6) and book papers (14). It is rare the printer of a chromolithograph, or other printed material, should credit the type of paper on which it’s printed for its quality but here the paper is shown with an actual chromolithograph, suggesting just that.

 

 

 

 

 


The importance of the Adams firm is demonstrated by their New York City offices, housed at 38 Park Row, in the eleven-story Potter Building commissioned by Orlando B. Potter and constructed in 1883-86 to replace Potter’s World Building, destroyed by fire in January 1882.

King’s Handbook mentions that there were two hundred offices in the Potter Building, “including those of several newspaper and periodical publishers, insurance and other companies, lawyers and professional men.” Among its newspaper tenants were the editorial and business offices of The Press, a popular penny newspaper founded in 1887 with ties to the Republican party, and the New York-Observer, the oldest American religious newspaper, started in 1823 and previously located in the World Building until the fire.

Other tenants included Peter Adams Co. and Adams & Bishop Co., manufacturers of fine papers for printing, maps, photography, etc.; the Mutual Reserve Fund Life Association, established in 1881 and the then largest assessment insurance firm in the world; the business offices of Otis Brothers & Co., manufacturers of elevators since 1855 and the leading maker of passenger elevators; the New York Architectural Terra Cotta Co. offices; and O.B. Potter himself, on the top floor.

The mill is now a restaurant, located along a popular hiking trail: https://www.journalinquirer.com/living/adams-mill-repurposing-an-old-building-for-a-restaurant/article_449e527a-2533-11e7-88ba-470bf2fdb629.html

Sons of Africa designed by Aaron Douglas


The designs created by Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) for Georgina A. Gollock’s Sons of Africa (New York: Friendship Press, 1928) are simple and refined but add enormously to the beauty of the book’s first edition. Gollock compiled this collection of biographies of notable Africans, “including kings and chiefs of pre-modern times, characters of the early nineteenth century when Africa was coming to know the West, and recently living Christian leaders.” In the 19th century, the Sons of Africa was an abolitionist group composed of prominent Africans living in Britain, including Olaudah Equiano.

 

Chapters include: The discovery of the sons of Africa. The great Askia; a tale of Timbuktu. Osai Tutu Kwamina; from Kumasi to the coast. A Nigerian romance; the career of Bishop Crowther. Tshaka the Zulu; a black Napoleon. Moshesh the nation-builder. Khama the Good. Sir Apolo Kagwa; from page to prime minister. Where three continents meet; the life work of J.E. Kwegyir Aggrey. Men of affairs. Evangelists, pastors, teachers. Among the prophets. Mothers of men.

 

1928 was a pivotal year for Douglas, a pioneered the African-American modernism. He received a one-year Barnes Foundation Fellowship in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he studied the painting and African art collection of Albert C. Barnes. It was also the year Douglas participated in the seminal College Art Association exhibition entitled “Contemporary Negro Art.”

 

 

 

The book’s publisher, The Friendship Press, was at that time a branch of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, which produced an international array of progressive books, including Blind spots: experiments in the self-cure of race prejudice by Henry Smith Leiper; India looks to her future by Oscar MacMillan Buck; Young Islam on trek by Basil Mathews; and Aggrey of Africa: a study in Black and white by Edwin William Smith.

 

Princeton’s copy also includes the dust jacket, which reproduces the design printed on the front and back covers.

The irresistible “wow” factor of Charles LeDray’s Book Ends

The unpacking and opening of this new acquisition has been documented below to avoid any misunderstandings with our reading room or the reading public. Seen here is the latest in a continuing series of deluxe limited editions published for the Library Council of the Museum of Modern Art under its editor May Castleberry.

Over the past two years Charles LeDray, an artist known for creating collections made up of a multiplicity of carefully crafted and often very small objects, produced a collection of 177 unique “used” miniature books and this week, the Graphic Arts Collection received its unique edition of LeDray’s Book Ends.

 

 

Writing for the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl observed, “The bite-size world of LeDray’s miniature sculptures is the real world scaled to thought—which, of course, must be compact enough to fit into our crowded skulls. . . . Beyond the irresistible “wow” factor of LeDray’s workaholic perfectionism, there’s a profound delight in grasping the quiddity of a specific mop or a lonesome cinder block. Even when the works are fanciful . . . they have the obduracy of righteous Minimalism, defying associations with the cute or the twee.” —https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/charles-ledray

Here is a description from MoMA: “LeDray’s volumes are miniaturized, abridged, and altered versions of eighteen used books that the artist found in secondhand shops, yard sales, or on the streets of New York and his own library. The list of eighteen . . . recall and reveal the multiple histories and fragile aspirations and creations of another era. The artist’s constructed artifacts, seemingly marked by the passage of time, illuminate the journey of a set of books through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

. . . To create miniature ephemera to be placed in each volume, he made over 1,500 drawings based on old bookplates, library cards and other printed or drawn pieces of his own invention that might have been inserted in a forgotten book. These pieces were printed by hand-letterpress by the Grenfell Press and by Peter Kruty Editions in Brooklyn.

. . . Each of these hand-sewn volumes measures less than four by five inches. Some are bound in cloth, some in paper; in all cases their covers have been foil stamped to replicate the covers of the original books. Working from LeDray’s drawings and mostly using letterpress, Miller and Ewing at the Grenfell Press, with the help of Peter Kruty Editions in Brooklyn, New York, printed over 1,100 pieces of ephemera, each unique.”

 


Of the 177 volumes, most of which went to the members of the Library Council, to libraries, and to the artist, 18 copies were set aside to make a unique sculptural set of 18 unique volumes as a gift from the artist to The Museum of Modern Art.

 

 

Read more about Charles LeDray:

https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/charles-ledray-workworkworkworkwork

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/kley/charles-ledray-at-whitney-museum1-7-11.asp

https://www.speronewestwater.com/exhibitions/charles-ledray/installations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8a5gXYzK2A

http://www.nyartbeat.com/event/2019/3DA3

https://www.peterfreemaninc.com/exhibitions/charles-ledray/press-release

 

 

Mame et Compagnie Bindings


One of the sad aspects in the history of our library, like many other institutional collections, is that many books and magazines were rebound as soon as they are purchased, discarding often decorative and even unique bindings. Although we already hold many books from the publishing firm of Mame et Compagnie or Mame et fils, we have acquired an additional set of ten volumes with their 19th-century French decorative paper bindings intact. Each has the original publishers’ colored embossed paper-covered boards, many with hand-colored lithograph inlays, some with school prize labels.

 

“The book then undergoes the binding in three workshops, magnificent in their arrangement and comfort, and in which are employed 260 men and 250 women and children.” This is the entire description of the Mame binding workshop given in the 1878 history of the Mame and Sons publishing company, entitled Firm of Alfred Mame and Sons (1796-1893): printing–binding–bookselling: patronal institutions: participation, A. Mame’s endowments, homes for working people, superannuation, mutual aid societies. The report offers little information on production of their books but concentrates on the civic engagement of the company, which promoted the health and well-being of its workers through stock participation, company housing, and other benefits.

“…The situation of the establishment in the centre of a city excluded the idea of giving gratuitous lodgings to the working people: a [site], Peabody’s buildings style, has been constructed, where 62 families are lodged in habitations completely isolated the one from the other, each having its little garden and forming a quadrangle around a vast square planted with trees” …The Firm of Alfred Mame… https://archive.org/details/firmofalfredmame00alfr/page/4/mode/2up

 

The titles included in this group of decorative bindings
Louis Fridel, Les Naugrages au Spitzberg ou les Salutaires effets de la confiance en dieu. Neuvième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1850.
Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Champagnac, Les Amies de Pension traduit de l’anglais. [Bibliothèque spéciale de la jeunesse]. Paris: P.C. LeHuby, [c. 1851].
Washington Irving, Voyages et découvertes des compagnons de Colomb… 4e édition. [Bibliothèque des écoles chrétiennes]. Tours: Mame, 1851.
Washington Irving, Voyages et découvertes des compagnons de Colomb… 7e édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1858.
Fanny, comtesse de Tilière, Laure et Anna ou la Puissance de la foi sur le caractère… sixième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1859.
Jules Lacroix de Marlès, Histoire de Russie… nouvelle édition. [Bibliothèque des écoles chrétiennes].Tours: Mame, 1861.
Ernest Fouinet, Gerson ou le Manuscrit aux enluminures… dixième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame, 1866.
Anaïs, comtesse de Bassanville, La Gerbe. Rouen: Mégard et Compagnie, 1870.
Catherine-Thérèse Woillez, Le jeune Tambour… onzième édition. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours, Mame et fils, 1872.
Contes arabes tirés des Mille et une nuits… Iere partie. [Bibliothèque de la jeunesse chrétienne]. Tours: Mame et fils, 1879.

 

The Catholic Encyclopedia published this biography of Alfred-Henry-Armand Mame (1811-1893) https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/alfred-henri-amand-mame

“Alfred conceived and carried out, for the first time, the idea of uniting in the same publishing house, a certain number of workshops, grouping all the industries connected with the making of books: printing, binding, selling, and forwarding. By analogy with the great ironworks of Le Creusot, the Mame firm has been called the literary “Creusot”.

Mame was also one of the principal owners of the paper-mills of La Haye-Descartes; and it could thus be said that a book, from the time when the rags are transformed into paper up to the moment when the final binding is put on, passed through a succession of workers, all of whom were connected with Mame. Daily, as early as 1865, this publishing house brought out from three to four thousand kilograms of books; it employed seven hundred workers within and from four hundred to five hundred outside.

Inspired by the social Catholic ideal, Alfred Mame established for his employees a pension fund for those over sixty, wholly maintained by the firm. He opened schools, which caused him to receive one of the ten thousand francs awards reserved for the “établissements modèles où régnaient au plus haut degré l’harmonie sociale et le bien-être des ouvriers”. In 1874 Mame organized a system by which his working-men shared in the profits of the firm.”